Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

It's September and I'm really not ready for the fall season!  I'm still wanting those warm days with the  hot sun, a good book on my ipad and the quiet afternoons on my deck with the birds and lizards.  I've started looking in my closet for summer things that I haven't worn! And I'm thinking of things that I want to do before the first snow in late October.  In the meantime there are beautiful places to visit and help ease the transition into fall. Visiting the lakes and taking a walk are things we love to do on a glorious day here in Prescott AZ. Wednesday's are 'free park' days and Peter and I will start making our weekly trips to all the lakes checking on the birds in the area.  We went to Watson Lake and found some Cormorants, Canadian Geese, and local Mallards.  It was too early for the ducks to return andI got excited about the lines of plants with a Cormorant tucked in the center. The sky was blue with lovely billowy white clouds an...

Recently I purchased Jeanette Kandray’s tutorial ‘Magnificent Mokume Gane’.  The pictures were so enticing that I just had to see and try her technique.  Mokume Gane is a metal working technique (Japanese) that fuses several layers of different colored precious metals together to form a sandwich of alloys.  The term is now used in many other mediums where different colors of materials such as polymer clay or metal clays are sandwiched.  In the case of polymer clay, we stack sheets of colored clay, make a design in them with tools or texture sheets, and carefully slice some of the top color away exposing the stacked colors beneath. Jeanette Kandray tutorial shares a technique that shortens the process considerably and produces varied effects depending on the choice of colors and texture sheets used.  The tutorial is well written and clearly illustrated.  In my opinion well worth the price of $12.00.     https://www.etsy.com/listin...

Each morning my goal is to have a beautiful day.  I remind myself that I am the one that makes my day a good one.  Most of the time I am successful.  This past month my ‘having a beautiful day’ system had a stress test.  A good friend died and in supporting his wife (also a good friend) a lot of memories surfaced from 14 years ago when my husband, my best friend, died and I worked through the grief.    A few years later I met Peter who became my ‘significant other’ (surely there is a better term!).  We’ve been together for 11 years.  I was surprised when I started feeling depressed following my friend’s death.  I expected to be sad – not depressed.   Staying positive, happy and focused on the good around me became difficult.  It took a few days for me to understand why I felt the way I did.   I needed to remind myself of a piece I wrote 5 years after my husband died.  It is still true for me. ...